Legitimacy, Comprehension and Empathy

Abstract

In this essay I argue against the notion that power is an input that ensures control over discourse and suggest that locally-specific cultural variables will determine what sort of language is effective within specific contexts and who is eligible to deploy this language legitimately. Drawing on examples from fieldwork in Guyana, South America, I illustrate how recognition of both external and local prestige was an important factor in successful discourse and illustrate how each of these was manifest in specific linguistic features. I go on to suggest that collaborative discourse that develops the interplay between these different discourse systems and which promotes changes in relations that go beyond the site of the discourse itself is a viable alternative to the struggles that inevitably arise when temporary renegotiations of control are exposed as strategic ploys to maintain the hegemony of the dominant group.

Keywords:

• collaboration
• language and power
• symbolic capital
• intercultural communication
• development

Notes

1 I conducted my fieldwork in Guyana between 1999 and 2002, with much help from both the local communities of the North Rupununi and from the staff of Iwokrama.

2 All the names of participants have been changed.

3 As opposed to marking surprise in Standard British English.

4 For a more detailed linking of the field, tenor and mode of discourse upwards to ideology and down to the lexicogrammar, see Bartlett (2006a; 2006b).